LinkedIn - If evil men...

Every important idea is simple. Here's my idea: if evil men can work together, to get what they want, so can good men, to get what they want.

- Leo Tolstoy

LinkedIn - The Infinite Society

I think that by using LinkedIn and exploring all the features it offers, a person can grow more and more aware of the potential of systematically and proactively managing one's social capital.

Before LinkedIn, there was no easy or convenient way to manage social relationships. Yet, there are so many opportunities that lay dormant within one's social networks. Like they say, "serendipity is too important to be left to chance."

Ultimately, if LinkedIn followed the advice of Yahoo! founders, who at one saw their company being capitalized at $50 billion, they could totally revolutionize the way we socially and economically relate to other people.

Yahoo! founders asked themselves one question: "How can we constructively alter the daily lives of millions of people?"

LinkedIn - Men and Women

Competition among women is a visual and social game.

Competition among men is an intellectual and financial game.

Both men and women compete in an economic game.

Money is a Jedi mind trick

LinkedIn - What is the ultimate purpose?

LinkedIn can position itself as a leader if and only if it addresses the central anxiety of people in our society, at this particular time of history.

The particular definition or phrasing of that anxiety is important.

Are people today most anxious about

1. finding a job?
2. finding a secure job?
3. increasing their professional value?
4. increasing their salary?
5. finding and developing their marketable talent?
6. improving their ability to learn how to learn (in order to continually adapt to the evolving economy)?

Since LinkedIn is a mass social software, it probably won't focus on any one of these anxieties, but try to address them all.

Therefore, it will be up to users to figure out what exactly is the main problem they are trying to solve in their own lives, and how they can use LinkedIn to their own advantage.

Otherwise, LinkedIn will just become yet another one of those new Web novelties that makes VC people feel they might be on to the "next big thing" without actually providing any concrete value to users.

LinkedIn - How can it give power to the people?

Comments / feedback welcome! (How is LinkedIn working for you?)

LinkedIn requires fundamental business know-how

LinkedIn creates a vast social capital infrastructure to enable people to exchange information, opportunities, resources, tips, insights, knowledge, etc.

Yet, this will require that people learn about business, which is all about mutually beneficial exchange.

LinkedIn - The Sweet Pot

The Sweet Pot is the point in your career or business where a huge number of people desperately want what you can easily (and cheaply) offer.

Think about Bill Gates.

People's main problem so far, at least professionally and economically, is that they can only deliver value in person. That is, they have to show up at the office to perform a service.

Because their value is intricately linked to their own physical person, they are "trapped" in the corporate world.

However, there is hope! As value is becoming more and more centered on a person's knowledge, most of which is fungible (that is, digitizable and transferrable electronically across the planet), people can gain more freedom and flexibility in their employment relationship with a client or employer.

LinkedIn - answers, I want answers!

Will LinkedIn help me find a date every Saturday night?

Well, if you're a guy like me, let's work through this together. First, let's see how the enemy, oops, I mean women, actually think.

Women want money, prestige, satisfaction -- often on the same evening. So a woman registered to LinkedIn is likely to scout the terrain in search of the ideal male: a man who's very rich, yet too old to have the energy to spend it by himself.

Just kidding, stay calm ladies.

Studies have shown that women view men as "success objects" whereas men view women as "sex objects."

This means that inevitably, human nature being what it is, LinkedIn could eventually create a special section where the most beautiful women will post their pictures online, but only the wealthiest men can view those pictures.

Does this make any sense?

How can I increase my bank account with LinkedIn, without making my friends and connections feel that I'm using them (which, of course, I am)?

I remember a quote: "You can have everything you want in life, if you give enough other people what they want in life."

Anthony Robbins expressed the same idea differently: "The key to wealth is distribution."

LinkedIn - Who benefits the most?

It's likely that if a person satisfies the following criteria, he/she is in the best position to benefit the most from a social capital management software like LinkedIn:

1. Has a clear talent or unique professional value proposition (everyone will be happy to promote such a person to their own friends, colleagues or acquaintances)
2. Has had significant experience in his field, therefore would be an asset to tap for his expertise, wisdom and know-how
3. Knows about self-marketing and how to position himself/herself in other people's mind for maximum social, economic and political impact
4. Knows the market value of his/her knowledge, so he can trade and negotiate fairly to make sure everybody wins
5. Knows his own knowledge gaps (difference between what he currently knows and what he should know in order to have a great career)
6. Knows what it is that he knows, and how to apply it to different client situations
7. Has his own career blog, where he posts his latest intellectual capital (white paper, technical articles, keynote speeches, methodologies, work samples, resume, etc.)

It is obvious from the above that a person has to do a lot of work before LinkedIn can become a useful and profitable tool.

LinkedIn is just a radio broadcast station

Your unique professional value (UPV) is like a song, and if it's not good, if it doesn't have a nice ring to it, then LinkedIn simply cannot help you. LinkedIn is just a radio station that broadcasts your self-promotional message, and if you don't look good, then LinkedIn will destroy your reputation faster than if you had not registered with the service!

So Tom Peters is definitely right about Brand You: you have to search and find what it is about you that makes people go "WOW! This person is really interesting / talented / gifted! I want to meet him/her!"

Unfortunately, I see many profiles that are so boring. Is it because the person doesn't have the writing skills, or because he/she really doesn't know what he/she excels at?

Steve Jobs on Life and Death

By JUSTIN NORTON
Monday, June 13, 2005

PALO ALTO, CALIF. — Apple Computer Inc. chief executive Steve Jobs has told Stanford University graduates that dropping out of college was one of the best decisions he ever made because it forced him to be innovative — even when it came to finding enough money for dinner.

In an unusually candid commencement speech Sunday, Mr. Jobs also told the almost 5,000 graduates that his bout with a rare form of pancreatic cancer re-emphasized the need to live each day to the fullest.

“Your time is limited so don't let it be wasted living someone else's life,” Jobs said to a packed stadium of graduates, alumni and family.

Mr. Jobs, wearing sandals and jeans under his robe, was treated like a rock star by the students, in large part due to the surge in popularity of Apple's iPod digital music player.
A group of students wore iPod mini costumes over their robes and several students shouted, “Steve, hire me!”

Mr. Jobs, 50, said he attended Reed College in Portland, Ore., but dropped out after only eight months because it was too expensive for his working-class family. He said his real education started when he “dropped in” on whatever classes interested him — including calligraphy.

Mr. Jobs said he lived off 5-cent soda pop recycling deposits and free food offered by Hare Krishnas while taking classes.

He told the graduates that few friends could see the value of learning calligraphy at the time but that painstaking attention to detail — including mastering different “fonts” — was what set Macintosh apart from its competitors.

“If I had never dropped out I might never have dropped in on that calligraphy,” Mr. Jobs said.
Mr. Jobs also recounted founding Apple in his parent's basement and his tough times after being forced out of the company he founded when he was only 30.

“I was a very public failure and I even thought about running away from the valley,” Mr. Jobs said.

Instead, he founded Pixar Studios, which has released enormously popular films such as Finding Nemo and Monsters Inc.

“It was awful-tasting medicine but I guess the patient needed it,” Mr. Jobs said.
When he was diagnosed with cancer, Mr. Jobs said his doctor told him he only had three- to-six months to live. He later found out he had a rare, treatable form of the disease — but he still learned a tough lesson.

“Remembering you are going to die is the best way to avoid the fear that you have something to lose,” he said.

Before the ceremony, a plane rented by the Computer TakeBack Campaign, an environmental group, flew over the stadium with a banner that read: “Steve, don't be a mini player — recycle all e-waste.” The group is prodding Apple to improve its efforts to recycle obsolete electronics.

LinkedIn: a sovereign individual's marketing weapon

The problem with today's society is that companies do too much marketing, and people -- ordinary people like you and me -- don't do enough marketing.

We don't do ANY marketing at all. I don't remember the last time I heard or saw a friend of mine on the radio, on television or in the newspaper, selling some product or service. Well, actually, I have a friend's who's an anchor for a television news show, but she's the only one who's "marketing" herself.

A NEW HOPE

LinkedIn allows people to do a bit of marketing, but very subtly.

People are wary of marketing messages, so you can't really go all out and shamelessly promote yourself. You have to do it gently and be smoooooth, real smooth about it (BTW, I'm giving calligraphy workshops, check it out here: http://freecalligraphycourse.blogspot.com)

But LinkedIn is not just a marketing tool. You can use it to drive your career development. How?

Focus on the four elements that Stephen Covey mentioned in his latest book, The 8th Habit. He says that to find your unique voice (or your unique career), you should determine the following four key elements:

• Talent: what is it that you do well (better than anyone else)?
• Passion: what are you truly passionate about?
• World's need: what is the need that you are serving?
• Conscience: what is most important to you? What is the right thing you wish to do?

If LinkedIn users check out your profile, and can see clear answers to the above questions, then you did a pretty good job of marketing yourself.

LinkedIn: strategic considerations

LinkedIn is a social software, therefore, it comes with a set of strategic and political considerations that perhaps it is best to carefully consider, if one is to benefit from this new tool while helping one's friends derive maximum value from it.

I might change my mind by the time I have a third cup of coffee, but as of this very moment, the following issues seem paramount:

1. Will LinkedIn help me find a date every Saturday night?
2. How can I increase my bank account with LinkedIn, without making my friends and connections feel that I'm using them (which, of course, I am)?
3. It seems fairly easy to "link in," but how do I "cash out"?

The answers are coming up!

Beauty is a Jedi mind trick

Nobody will dispute the fact that in the presence of a strikingly beautiful woman, men often don't know what to say or do. It's as if the beautiful woman suddently took control, through some mysterious mystical pathway, of the male brains around her.

These poor male brains suddenly experience a hostile takeover by a foreign power, and all logical and rational functions instantly shut down. The right side of the male brain is then turned on, and secretly launches flights of uncontrollable erotic fantasies that are just too lurid to be described here. (If nobody minds, I'll just go for a really cold shower. Back in five.)

Yet not all males are so weak-minded, for a few have received special training to "fight back" all female attempts to take over their intellectual functions and turn them into slaves ready to obey every command of the oh-so-beautiful woman.

The most ambitious females, of course, counter-attack by following elite training of their own, to be able to break down all psycho-resistance barriers erected by the alpha males (alpha = handsome, rich, powerful, etc.). In her quest for socially upward matrimony and subsequent social supremacy, a beautiful woman will often strive to attain a certain exalted social status (such as a beauty queen award) in order to massively break down all mental resistance in the men she is targeting for seduction of the blow-your-mind-take-no-prisoner variety.

Example: Super model Natalia Vodianova. From a poor background and family, she learned culture, refinement and the subtle art of conversation, and look how she conquered her husband, a handsome man from a wealthy English family (somehow, I hate him already!).

The interesting thing is that her former boyfriend actually pushed her out the door so she could go to a Paris model audition, which jumpstarted her career. She later left him, but gave him a Mercedes as a gift. (Somehow, my past romantic relationships did not end that well!).

Bottom line is: Beauty is a Jedi mind trick. In other words, beauty is NOT a physical state or an image, but the highly sophisticated yet effortless and effective manipulation of the male brain into wholeheartedly believing that all the pleasure, riches and power in life will only come through the angelic face and shapely female body that he is currently contemplating.

More on this intriguing revelation later on.

Blah blah blah vs blog blog blog

Bloggers seem to have one definite career advantage over non-bloggers: they can actually see what knowledge (or junk) they are producing. If they write junk, and enable readers to post comments, then they will soon enough realize whether they are writing something that people value (or not).

Non-bloggers, on the other hand, can never know, really and objectively, whether their knowledge is useful to other people (including friends and family).

I may be wrong, but it seems that people will increasingly head toward either one of two groups:

• the Blah Blah Blah group, composed of people who love to talk and talk and talk without capturing any knowledge or creating new, useful and valuable knowledge

vs

• the Blog Blog Blog group, composed of people who write their ideas, thoughts, observations, insights, etc. (most of which may or may not be useful to others)

A goal exerts enormous gravitational pull

Motivational speakers and authors often exhort people to WRITE DOWN THEIR GOALS.

It makes sense: if you don't know what EXACTLY you're trying to achieve, then you will just drift through life, like a piece of dead wood in a river flowing to nowhere.

I believe a WRITTEN GOAL is more than just an objective to aim for. A written goal is actually a living entity that proactively, albeit subconsciously, directs your intelligence and, to a large extent, many of the events in your life.

If you write down a small goal, you will meet small people and experience small, almost insignificant events in your life.

But if you write down BIG GOALS, then you will attract ambitious people and create big events in your life.

They say that the pen is more powerful than the sword.

In view of the fact that a written goal can exert influence on what happens in your life, I say that the pen is more powerful than whoever you currently are. Master the pen, and you master your destiny.

Valedictorian secret

At the end of every high school year, during the 1980s, parents would often come to me and warmly congratulate me on my academic performance (I always ended up with the highest GPA).

I could see in their eyes the admiration they had for me, although I never quite understood why. I never thought I was special or more intelligent than the other kids. I just did what came naturally, and somehow, mysteriously, I've always had lots of self-discipline and great study habits.

Now that I look back, I regret that those parents never asked me one critical question that, perhaps, could have helped their own kids: "How did you do it? What's your secret?"

Perhaps they thought about that question, but were too polite to ask. After all, my success secret, as a student, could conceivably be considered a "trade secret."

Yet, if they had dared ask me that question, I would have answered: "Little by little, does the trick."

This is the single most powerful success secret in the universe.

Einstein said it differently. On the occasion of his receiving the Nobel Prize, a reporter asked him what was the most powerful force in the universe, and he replied: "Compound interest."

When you think about it, "compound interest = little by little, does the trick."

Because of the "compounding" effects, the only secret, really, is to start as EARLY as possible.

How to manage your career for maximum $$$

There are two kinds of people:

1. Those who look for a job
2. Those who look for a talent

If you look for a job, then your entire career will be controlled by someone else: the employer. This is because no matter what job you take, the job will ALWAYS belong to the employer. He can take it away from you any time, without giving you any explanation as to why. He can just walk into you cubicle Friday at 5 PM, and tell you: "Don't bother coming in Monday."

The manly attitude is to face the truth: no matter what you own (a house, a car, a dog, whatever), the truth is that every day, from 9 to 5, your ass belongs to the employer. An employee is someone who gives up his freedom 5 days out of 7, from 9 AM to 5 PM, in exchange for security.

Many people will deny this fact (that they are slaves), and because they engage in self-denial, they will probably remain employees till they are 65 years of age. If you wake up one day, when you're 65, and you realize that you've been working like a slave all your life, then it's a little bit too late to do something about it (unless you're a descendent of Colonel Sanders and you want to start a chicken franchise).

However, the people who are intellectually honest to themselves and work hard to save money in order to launch a business of their own -- those people are already on their way to financial independence.

The trick is to begin to use other people, while offering them something in return. In international trade, they call it the comparative advantage concept: if you're good at producing service A, then exchange that service with someone who's good at producing service B. That way, you both win.

LinkedIn allows you to find people whose skills and assets complement yours. Think about it: if corporations, with all their enormous resources, need partners, we little folks need partners even more!

Bottom line: to manage your career for maximum $$$, you must think of your career as a business.

More on this later on.

Language is the ultimate instructional technology

There are many simple truths that seem to have escaped the radar screen of instructional designers and HR people:

1. Learning is so important today that it MUST happen as often as possible.
2. This means that learning must be designed around an activity or human capability that people do naturally and can do well while deriving pleasure from it.

What comes to your mind? Conversation, of course!

A (poetically inclined) author once wrote: ''A subtle conversation, that is the Garden of Eden.''

Unfortunately, learning is not very subtle today. Knowledge is, more often than not, treated as an object to be 'managed' (hence, the term 'knowledge management').

And learning is treated as a process to be made as efficient as possible through technologies. Hence, the term 'e-learning.' There is so much industry-generated hype about e-learning that people often forget that true learning is not electronic, but verbal: the best learning occurs when two people are talking to one another, honestly and frankly and with utmost respect for the other person's reception and interpretation of the message.

This is not a new finding. As kids, we learned the most important things from our parents: how to behave, how to be disciplined (and why it's important), how to work hard, how to respect other people, etc.

Trust, bonding, mutual respect, etc. are all important aspects of learning important things. Yet they are mostly absent from most e-learning applications and programs.

E-learning should be called for what it is: e-transfer of information.

Learning is something else. It is the acquisition of knowledge, and knowledge is the ''capacity for effective action.'' (According to Peter Senge).

The highest form of learning occurs as a conversation between a master and an apprentice (very much like a Jedi master and his Padawan).

When the conditions are perfectly right -- for example, when a master senses that the timing is right to transfer a specific and incredibly important piece of knowledge, and when a learner is faced with a situation that completely bewilders him and is therefore most open to masterly guidance -- language becomes the ultimate and most effective means of teaching.

But this requires that the master be not only a master of technique, but also a master of words, so he can properly convey, in the minimum amount of words, the maximum amount of wisdom (which, hopefully, should last during the entire lifetime of the apprentice).

Unfortunately, such masters have become a rarity in today's society.

We have lost much of our language skills, and perhaps the consequence is that we teach the young with less effectiveness at a time in history when the dangers are many and the threats keep multiplying. Equally alarming is the fact that we respect language and words less and less, in today's image-driven world of 24-hours-a-day news on TV, the Web, etc.

Perhaps a solution would be to provide opportunities for people to rediscover the magic of words and the transforming power of language, when used skillfully, as in story-telling.

From social software to existential opportunity

The Internet was created originally as a means for U.S. national defense, in case communications infrastructure broke down in the event of a nuclear war.

I've the feeling that social software like www.linkedin.com could become a 'social' Internet, to enable people to network and ensure their career security in case the 'corporate employment' system breaks down.

For example, a recent feature article in Fortune magazine, titled '50 and fired' , talked about how hard it was for many 50+ workers to get a new job once they were let go. It seems that Don Tapscott is right when he says, 'your network is your net worth.'

Today employees can no longer ask employers for lifetime employment. It's actually the opposite: employers demand that employees maintain ' lifetime employability.' Therefore, it is up to workers to maintain and hone their skills, build their professional network of friends and allies, and stay informed through career intelligence networks.

LinkedIn.com is really a great tool to empower people, through the Web-based leveraging of professional relationships and social ties. Although these social connections do make things happen much faster in a person's social life or career or business, they do not appear in GDP calculations or economic equations, which is probably why nobody ever thought of proactively capturing their value and quantifying it for proper scholarly study and systematic leverage.

In my estimation, LinkedIn is not just a piece of social software; it's a powerful tool for generating existential opportunities (that is, you get to meet people that you normally would never have met, and perhaps do things together with them for mutual benefit, personal growth and/or professional development. (Disclosure: I'm not on the payroll of LinkedIn, although I wouldn't mind doing business development work for them as Chief Evangelist!).

This reminds me of the invention of gun powder. The Chinese actually discovered it long before the West did, but it was the West that used it in firearms to ensure military supremacy.

Similarly, I believe tools like LinkedIn contain great power. The only question is whether people actually see its potential, and are able and willing to use it to their own strategic advantage.